


Fight With Him, Too

by tisfan



Series: Imagine Clint and Coulson prompts [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Arguments, BAMF Clint Barton, BAMF Phil Coulson, Brothers, Domestic Violence, Kidnapping, M/M, blood is thicker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 01:13:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10560882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: So I'd love a kidnapping/rescue mission fic. Clint and Phil had a fight b4 Phil had to leave on a mission. Phil gets taken by surprisingly competent bad guys who rough him up. Meanwhile Clint feels guilty and does something stupidly brave to rescue Phil.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this fic contains a small amount of domestic violence; two highly trained people sometimes react violently. Be aware of your own comfort levels before reading. No one is actually injured, just upset.

“You told me you were done with him,” Phil snapped, throwing the stack of papers at Clint. Clint didn’t bother to try to catch them; they fluttered to the ground around him like dead birds. “You told me it was over. You said, and I believe I’m quoting here, ‘if I never see him again, it’ll be too soon.’”

“Look, if you would just listen --”

“I can look, or I can listen, Clint, and what I’m doing right now is looking at _eighty thousand dollars_ worth of debt. And I am listening. What’s coming out of your mouth doesn’t excuse this. At all.”

“You always said money doesn’t matter,” Clint snapped, kicking at the paperwork that lay, scattered, all over the floor.

“You think this is about money?”

“Didn’t you just say it was about money?” Clint hated arguing. He loathed it. Hated being yelled at, hated being blamed, hated that it was _probably_ fair that he was being blamed.

Phil took a deep breath and put on his professional SHIELD agent face. Clint hated that face even more than the I’m disappointed in you face. When Phil was all the way into fronting his work-persona, it meant he was putting Clint into the category of _problem_ and not _boyfriend_. Phil turned around, walked over to the small cabinet at the corner of the dining room, withdrew a battered bottle of scotch and poured himself a drink.

In the half-second it took Clint to cross the room, slam his hand down over the open glass and force it back down to the table, untasted, he had too many thoughts in a head that wasn’t used to juggling that many at a time.

_No, Phil would not have a drink before continuing an argument._ He had too many visions of empty glasses and blood splatters on the floor. Of raging, screaming matches, and reckless speeding away in their beat-up El Camino. Of police coming to the door to tell a seven year old boy and his eleven year old brother that they were orphans.

_Barney was blood._ He was the only family that Clint had, and yes, his brother annoyed him, and yes his brother used him, and yes, it would probably be better for everyone, all the way around, if Barney would trip and break his neck. But he hadn’t. And he’d come to Clint for help. Again. And if Phil couldn’t understand that, then there was no talking to the man, because that was an argument that was going to happen over and over again without changing.

_Yes, Clint was an asshole._ He knew that, he was stupid, he was prone to depression, and he almost inevitably leaped before he looked. But Phil knew that. He knew it, and if he wasn’t capable of dealing with it, he should never, ever have started this relationship, because people don’t fucking change.

And in that half-second, Clint forgot one crucial thing. Phil was an agent with as good, or better, reflexes than Clint had. That he was skilled in combat, and that he’d already had a bad day before coming home and finding out that Clint had put ten percent down on a bail bond and that Barney had fucking skipped town, which left Clint owing a lot of fucking money.

As soon as Clint’s hand came down on the glass, Phil was moving without thinking, and Clint found himself pinned to the table, arm twisted behind his back, shirt soaked with whiskey.

It wouldn’t have taken Clint very long to get out of the pin, but he didn’t have to. As soon as Phil blinked, he’d taken his hands off his boyfriend and stepped backward, face twisting up with remorse. “Oh, Christ, I’m so--”

Clint didn’t let him finish that sentence. There were a lot of things he was willing to let slide in his day to day life. Phil’s terrible taste in music, his ridiculous crush on Steve Rogers, the anal-retentive manner in which he displayed his collectable items. But Clint was never, ever again going to let someone he loved put hands on him like that again. Ever.

The door slammed behind him and Clint was already running before Phil finished his apology.

***

If Clint didn’t want to be found, Phil wasn’t going to find him. Phil already knew that, from the months he’d spent trying to track down and recruit the archer in the first place. It hadn’t been until he’d managed to intrigue Clint into investigating the annoying SHIELD agent who was following him around that Phil had any chance to plead his case.

Sometimes people were predictable.

What had worked once would probably -- hopefully -- work again.

Rather than chasing after the boyfriend that he’d rather brutally assaulted and offended (Phil was sorry about that, but at the same time he really would have thought Clint would know better, by this point, than to try to sneak up on him. Which, when Phil thought about it a little bit more was probably still Phil’s fault, because Clint still managed to sneak up on the Black Widow and had gotten his nose broken a few times for his trouble.

Phil put on Clint’s favorite TV show; stripped and showered, and when he dressed again, he was wearing Clint’s clothes; a purple tee and a pair of dark gray sweats with a broken tie. He poured two mugs of coffee and waited.

Someone looking in through the slight gap in the curtains would have thought him calm. If they didn’t know him. Clint would know what he was seeing; if Clint was even watching. Phil was nowhere near calm.

Inside, Phil was frantic. He and Clint argued all the time. Sometimes they even had all out fights, but this was the first time things had escalated to violence.

_I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry._

Phil was trying to decide what he hoped for versus what he expected. Best case, Clint would come home and they could talk it out. Worst case, Phil would have to spend weeks, months, trying to track down the man he loved and at least be able to apologize. Phil was just coming to the conclusion that he was a grade-A idiot when something he did not expect at all happened.

The window exploded in shards of glass; a small, directed charge and Phil was just starting his reflexive dive off the sofa when his shoulder stung, like he’d pissed off a wasp.

He caught the faintest, fading glance of a blue tuft of feathers protruding from a silver tube when everything went black around him and Phil fell onto the floor.

***

Clint stood, drew back his bow. He didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but the hell someone was going to steal his boyfriend while Clint was still pissed off.

A noise behind him alerted him and Clint whirled; someone was trying to get the drop on him. He loosed the arrow anyway; he could hit shit with his eyes closed and upside down, getting a tracker on that van was more important than even his own life. SHIELD could track down what the fuck happened to Phil; his tracker arrows would send up an all-hands in an hour if he didn’t disable them.

“Hey, little brother,” Barney said. He was smart; he didn’t run, didn’t dodge, didn’t do anything except stand there, Clint’s arrow pointed directly between his eyeballs. He didn’t act like prey, didn’t act like a predator, didn’t give Clint’s instincts any reason to shoot him.

“Barney,” Clint acknowledged, and then dismissed his brother, his brother whose fault this was entirely, because if Barney hadn’t dodged bail, Phil wouldn’t have had to find out about the money, and if clint hadn’t been so stupid in the first place, he’d have at least talked to Phil…

“Don’t.” Barney put a hand on Clint’s shoulder, messing with precision aim. Clint could probably still shoot the driver even as far out as he was, but now the van was actually moving with its precious cargo inside and killing the driver now, without knowing how Phil was secured risked broken bones, a broken neck.

“What do you want?”

“To help,” Barney said. “This is my fault.”

No, duh, really?

“And to not fuck up the rest of the mission,” Barney continued. Clint glared.

“What mission?”

Barney raised a pair of binoculars, peering at the van. “You get a tracker on that?”

“Duh.”

“Good. Maybe this isn’t a SNAFU.”

“You’re involved,” Clint pointed out. “Of course it’s fucked up. What the fuck, Barney?”

“They think he’s you,” Barney said. “He was wearing your damn clothes, and I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”

“I’m supposed to be the one in that van.”

“You’re tough, kid,” Barney pointed out. “And they know you’re my brother.”

“I’m supposed to be bait for the trap?”

Barney shrugged. “Something like that.”

Clint glared. “Would that have fuckin’ mattered to you?”

“Well, since I fixed it for you to be the one kidnapped, yes, it matters.” Way to dodge the question, big brother. Clint was pretty sure Barney knew exactly what he was saying; if Clint had gotten himself into trouble, or some random bad guys had decided to try to draw FBI Agent Barney Barton into a trap by using his underachiever brother, Clint would have been on his own. Like always.

His eyes went to the van, now beyond sight, but Clint could imagine in, his boyfriend tied up tight in the back, unconscious. Not that Phil wasn’t a tough son-of-a-bitch and could probably get out of this mess without Clint’s help, which had nothing to do with anything…

“Yeah, you fixed us all real good, didn’t you?” Clint was super casual, almost enough that Barney was taken completely by surprise when Clint smashed him in the face with his bow. “My _brother_.”

Barney had never been one to pull punches, and perhaps it was stupid of Clint to get into a fist fight with a top FBI agent with Phil getting further away by the minute, but Clint had never been well-known for his ability to plan ahead. Beating the shit out of Barney seemed like a damn good idea and Clint meant to go through with it, except Barney stood, danced back out of range and held up his hands.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay. I got my own problems. Didn’t mean for your man to end up part of ‘em.”

“You meant for me to be in the back of that fuckin’ van,” Clint spat blood. When had Barney gotten a hit in? _Jesus, Barton, pay attention._

“You want to go get him, or do you want to waste time here?”

_Why was both never an option?_

***

Why did they always do that? It must be in the villains 101 manual or something. Phil blinked as they ripped the black bag off his head and he found himself staring into too-bright lights. Shadows moved behind the lights and Phil counted. There might be one or two people behind him; he could hear breathing, but not well enough to tell. At least five.

A woman approached, green hair and hard eyes. Tall. She towered over the man at her side, a Hydra agent brick if Phil had ever seen one. The woman grabbed Phil’s chin and turned his head from side to side. His head hurt, but Phil kept his eyes open as much as he could. Someone had struck him at some point, his jaw ached and his skin was sticky with drying blood.

The woman threw him back into the chair where he was bound; handcuffs around his wrists; his ankles were cuffed to a ring on the floor behind him, keeping his legs spread. He tugged at the wrists and a chain rattled; the whole rig was tagged together. He searched with his fingers; but -- _shit_. He’d changed clothes, he was in Clint’s purple tee, not one of his dress shirts with near invisible tools stored in the cuffs.

She licked her fingers, his blood disappearing with quick swipes of her tongue. “Not who we were looking for,” she said. “Idiots and fools.”

“Hey,” Phil said, his voice easy and personable. “Mistakes happen. I get that, totally. Happy to just go my way and let you get back to your schedule.”

“Madam,” one of the bricks spoke up. “Someone’s approaching the building.”

The woman turned away, went to the other side of the room to look at something on the monitor. Phil explored the chains around his wrist; standard. Damn it, he really hated dislocating his thumb. Phil shifted slightly, found the back support for the chair, pressed his hand against it. The chains rattled, just a little. No one paid any attention to them; they really had no idea who he was.

“Trade,” a familiar voice came through tinny speakers. “You want this fucker, well, I got no problems with you havin’ him.”

_Aw, Barton, no._

“Think he’s managed to bring us Trickshot, Madam,” the brick said, which duh, that was obvious, of course Clint would have whoever they were really after. Phil repressed his smile. Even as angry as Clint had been-- well, that was love, wasn’t it?  


“How fortuitous that I have eyes of my own,” Madam responded, the chill in her voice making Phil wish he had his long sleeved shirts for more than one reason. She turned on Phil. “Who are you that this man wishes to bring us Agent Barton in exchange for you?”

Agent Barto-- oh, well, that was interesting, wasn’t it? Phil shrugged his shoulders, letting his thumb come to rest against the back of the chair. God, this was gonna hurt, wasn’t it. He gave the woman his most bland smile. “I think you might want to ask the other question, instead. Who’s bringing you Agent Barton, in exchange for me.”

Phil yanked, bit down on a scream as he popped his thumb, yanked his hand free of the cuff and grabbed a handful of Madam’s throat.

Just in time for Iron Man and Thor to rip the roof off of the warehouse.

“Agent Agent,” Iron Man said, as if they’d bumped into each other at a party. “You’re looking well. I hope you don’t mind us crashing your little adventure.”

“Not at all,” Phil said. Madam’s throat was fragile under his hand, even with the broken thumb. “Got a present for you.”

“I’ve got this,” Natasha said, dropping out of the wreckage with a pair of cuffs. “Hello, Phil.”

“Agent Romanoff,” Phil said, letting go of Madam as Natasha took her into custody. “You didn’t have to bring out the whole gang, just to give me a lift home.”

“You know how Stark is,” she said, conversational, as if she didn’t have a handful of pissed off Hydra agent. “Can’t resist the urge to show off.”

“It’s a nice suit,” Phil said. “He should wear it more often. Really, makes his eyes pop.”

“Don’t flirt with tony while I’m still mad at you!” Aaand there was Clint.

“Hey, sweetheart,” Phil said. He tugged the handcuff chain out, hoping to God that he needed a reason to have both hands free, and Clint didn’t disappoint, dropping between Phil’s knees to hug him, hard. “I’m so sorry.”

“I shouldn’t have left you,” Clint was babbling in his ear. “This should never have happened, I’m suppos’d to have eyes on you, all the time. So, so stupid.”

“Hey,” Phil said, pressing one hand to the side of Clint’s face, trying to ignore the silver cuff still around his wrist like a bracelet. “I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

“Actually,” Clint’s brother, Barney, said, “I think this one’s on me.” Barney had a very pretty bruise across his face that ended with a cut near his temple that was still bleeding sluggishly.

“Don’t think I’ve forgotten that,” Clint snapped. “What the fuck did you need bail for if you’re--”

“Undercover, Clint,” Barney said. “I can’t talk about it, it’s classified.”

“Do you even know who this is?” Clint waved a hand at Phil, still petting Phil’s hair with the other hand. “He can eat your security clearance for lunch.”

“Well, then you don’t need me to tell you,” Barney said, giving them a hard flash of teeth. “I’ll make sure you get reimbursed for the bailbond. See ya around, little brother.”

Clint glared, looking like he was ready to start the fight all over again, when Phil brought his chin around and kissed him softly. “Don’t worry about it, Hawkeye.”

“I am _done_ with him,” Clint snapped. “This time, I really, really mean it.”

Phil sighed. “No, you’re probably not, baby. And that’s okay. It really is.” Clint would never let go of those few things he loved, no matter what. Phil let his sore cheek rest against Clint’s chest, listening to the heart beat strong and loyal underneath.

“Sorry I left you,” Clint said.

“You never did,” Phil said, pressing Clint’s hand over his chest. “You’ve always been right here.”


End file.
